A friend of mine who works in the library service in Dorset was recounting a conversation she was having with a library customer the other day, it quite amused me so I thought I’d post it here. Basically he was complaining about his son being taught a foreign language in school:
“In my opinion there’s only 2 languages in this world, English and foreign. The French speak foreign, the Spanish speak foreign, the Italians speak foreign… Imagine if 2 foreign people met, for example a Russian and a German, they can’t communicate with each other unless they speak English. So that proves my point, only English and foreign. And foreign is no bloody use if you visit more than one country, so I don’t see why waste their time teaching it in schools.”
I sometimes think it would be nice if my view of the world was so simple and black and white, or maybe not…
The sad thing is that with that attitude foreign will always remain foreign, so your friend will never know what he is missing. He is like one of the blind men who will forever just know one part of the elephant.